BOOKS OF THE TIMES; A View From the Center Of the Iraq Maelstrom

Published: January 12, 2006

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Although Mr. Bremer did not publicly call for more American troops while he was posted in Iraq, he said in the fall of 2004, before the presidential election, that inadequate forces had hampered the occupation by allowing widespread looting to create ''an atmosphere of lawlessness'' early on. In this volume, Mr. Bremer much more forcefully emphasizes his belief, throughout his tenure in Iraq, that more troops were needed to secure the country, and his fear that the Pentagon -- adhering to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's theory of streamlining the military -- was eager to ''replace U.S. troops with unprepared Iraqi police'' who had been rushed ''through truncated training courses.''

Mr. Bremer quotes a September 2003 memo in which Mr. Rumsfeld declared that ''our goal should be to ramp up the Iraqi numbers, try to get some additional international forces'' and ''reduce the U.S. role.'' And he writes that Colin L. Powell said this push was related to concerns that the president might have to mobilize more National Guard units, including ones from crucial states in an election year.

Mr. Rumsfeld seems to have ignored Mr. Bremer's entreaties. Before leaving for Iraq in May 2003, Mr. Bremer sent the defense secretary a copy of a RAND report estimating that 500,000 troops would be needed to stabilize postwar Iraq -- more than three times the number of troops then deployed. ''I think you should consider this,'' Mr. Bremer wrote in his cover memo. He says he never heard back from Mr. Rumsfeld.

The same thing happened a year later, Mr. Bremer recounts, when he sent Mr. Rumsfeld a message noting ''that the deterioration of the security situation since April had made it clear, to me at least, that we were trying to cover too many fronts with too few resources.'' He recommended that the Pentagon ''consider whether the Coalition could deploy one or two additional divisions for up to a year.'' Again, he says, he never heard back from Mr. Rumsfeld.

As for President Bush, Mr. Bremer says he spoke to him about the RAND report in May 2003 and brought up the issue of troop levels again the following month in a video conference with the National Security Council, presided over by Mr. Bush.

On the controversial matter of disbanding the Iraqi army, Mr. Bremer argues, as he has in interviews, that ''the old army had long since disappeared'' by the time he arrived in Iraq: ''when Iraqi draftees had seen which way the war was going in 2003, they simply deserted and went home to their farms and families.'' The decision to formally dissolve Mr. Hussein's army, Mr. Bremer contends, was meant to ''demonstrate to the Iraqi people'' that the United States had destroyed ''the underpinnings of the Saddam regime.'' That decision, Mr. Bremer adds, was hardly his alone, but was made in consultation with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and was authorized by Mr. Rumsfeld.

The exclusion of former Baathists from the government was more complicated. Mr. Bremer writes that before he even got to Baghdad, Mr. Feith showed him a draft order for the ''De-Baathification of Iraqi Society'' and said he was thinking of having Mr. Bremer's predecessor in Baghdad, Jay Garner, issue the order right away.

Mr. Feith was persuaded to let Mr. Bremer issue the decree himself, when he got to Baghdad. Its implementation, Mr. Bremer writes, was left largely to Iraqis on the Governing Council like Mr. Chalabi, who was close to Mr. Feith and other neo-conservatives at the Pentagon. ''Our de-Baathification policy had targeted only the top 1 percent of the party's members,'' he writes, ''but under Chalabi's direction, the Iraqi De-Baathification Council had broadened the policy, for example, depriving thousands of teachers of their jobs.'' In retrospect, Mr. Bremer adds, he ''had been wrong to give a political body like the Governing Council responsibility for overseeing the de-Baathification policy.''

At one point, talking about the Iraqi Governing Council, Mr. Bremer said to Mr. Wolfowitz, ''Those people couldn't organize a parade, let alone run the country.''

As this book makes clear, the hidden and not-so-hidden agendas of Washington officials and exiles like Mr. Chalabi, along with the clashing interests of various Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish representatives, turned many of Mr. Bremer's 18-hour days into marathons of frustrating conflict resolution. Combined with the daily exigencies of overseeing a country threatening to slip into chaos and the maddening bureaucratic problems of getting even the simplest plans off the ground, they give a whole new meaning to the phrase ''crisis management,'' and they leave the reader with a sobering sense of the staggering difficulties of the situation in Iraq.